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Microsoft's bid to buy Nokia came late on Monday. Despite rumors to that effect over the past year since Nokia's financial troubles began, few expected the deal to go ahead quite like this. We explore what's going down, with whom, and when.

Speaking of time, timing, actually, is rather key to the Microsoft Nokia announcement. Just look what's happened in the past few weeks:

July 11: Microsoft announces a sweeping internal reorg, creating four new engineering units, a centralized marketing operation and a structure its management believes is more suited to supporting Microsoft's new devices and services charter.

September 3: Microsoft buys Nokia's handset unit; both the Lumia smart-phone and tablet and Asha feature-phone brands; and Nokia's CEO Elop -- who for about two years, ran the Office division at Microsoft. Elop is going to head up an "expanded devices team" at Microsoft. Julie Larson-Green, the recently minted Executive Vice President of Devices & Studios, is going to report to Elop once this holiday season's Xbox One and Surface 2 launches are over.

Ballmer and the board have claimed and continue to claim that Microsoft needs to be in both the consumer and enterprise markets because of the bring your own device/consumerization of IT trends. The official stance is growth in enterprise is untenable without a strong consumer/device presence.

Adding Nokia to the Microsoft mix could make it a lot more difficult to justify carving up Microsoft along devices and services/software -- or consumer/enterprise -- lines. Are smartphones consumer or enterprise? What about Lumia phablets or tablets?

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